Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Cultural Relativism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cultural Relativism. Show all posts

Thursday, June 16, 2016

The Corporate Joust with Morality

by Caroline Kaeb And David Scheffer
Opino Juris
Originally posted June 6, 2016

Here is the end:

This duel between corporate responsibility and corporate deceit and culpability is no small matter.  The fate of human society and of the earth increasingly falls on the shoulders of corporate executives who either embrace society’s challenges and, if necessary, counterattack for worthy aims or they succumb to dangerous gambits for inflated profits, whatever the impact on society.

The fulcrum of risk management must be forged with sophisticated strategies that propel corporations into the great policy debates of our times in order to promote social responsibility and thus strengthen the long-term viability of corporate operations.  We believe that task must begin in business schools and in corporate boardrooms where decisions that shape the world are made every day.

The article is here.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Science Cannot Teach Us to Be Good

By Daniel Jacobson
Big Ideas at Slate.com

Here is an excerpt:

Consider first the relativist conception of morality, on which goodness consists in conformity with the widely accepted practices of one’s society. Sometimes such behavior is called pro-social, a tendentious term that seems to imply that non-conformity is antisocial. If to be virtuous is to be fully enculturated, as this view claims, then moral dissent must be both mistaken (since moral facts are at bottom sociological facts) and vicious (since goodness is conformity).

Although many social scientists advocate this view, it rests on a premise that cannot claim any scientific backing: the normative principle that it is always illegitimate to criticize another culture by standards it does not accept. This is widely seen as a failure of tolerance, as cultural imperialism or ethnocentrism. The relativists don’t seem to notice that their own principle puts such criticism out of bounds, since conformity to widely accepted ethnocentrism is virtuous by their lights. In fact, no one holds the relativist principle consistently.

The entire article is here.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Normative & Descriptive Ethics

By JW Gray
Ethical Realism
Originally posted May 5, 2014

I believe that one source of confusion can be solved by the distinction between normative and descriptive ethics. Whenever people talk about cultural relativism or evolutionary theories of ethics, I think they have descriptive ethics in mind, but they often jump to the conclusion that whatever they are talking about has certain obvious normative implications. In particular, some people claim that morality comes from evolution and others claim that morality is relative. What they have in mind often doesn’t actually make sense, as I will discuss in detail.

The short, yet interesting article is here.